The jokes came quickly and rather repetitively. The Sixers, now sitting at 3-1, were off to a good start, while in Phoenix, the Suns won their first two games and had a lead on the Thunder in Oklahoma City before finally losing to go to 2-1. So the notion spread that the Sixers and Suns, it turns out, are bad at tanking. Har har.

Over the course of the past year, and even before, there has been much hand-wringing about what has become a vile and detested word in the NBA: tanking.

With a stacked draft in 2014, including as many as five players who might be No. 1 picks in many other drafts, there has been widespread accusation that certain franchises simply might not be trying very hard, hoping to ensure they can land at the top of the draft.

Put that notion to Suns president Lon Babby and he does some pretty firm push-back.

“I don’t know how anybody buys into the idea that you try to lose,” Babby told SN on Tuesday. “Would you come to work every day and try to be bad at your job? It’s just a lot of silliness, really. You put together a team, you have a long-term plan, you have a long-term process.

"But the guys on the team you put together, they’re going to go out there and try to win every day. You want that. The coach wants that, the front office wants that. You try to build a culture and lay a foundation for the future. So this notion that we want to lose, it is nonsense.”

There is a lack of nuance that comes with tanking accusations, and that too often gets lost by those who have been hammering the tanking drumbeat.

In the NBA, more than in any other sport, clearing out your roster of veterans, bringing in young players and hoping to land a star in the draft is the most reliable way to rebuild a franchise. It does not work all the time—the Bobcats tried to go the draft route for much of the past decade, for example, but have not been able to find a star—but if you are going to turn around a flailing franchise, having a good pick in a talented draft is the surest direction.

Go back to 2003, and remember that Cleveland and Denver won 17 games each that year, worst in the league, followed by Toronto (24) and Miami (25). They wound up with, respectively, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. They had to suffer through a terrible season to get there, but the payoff was worth it.

As the Sixers and Suns have shown, putting together a young team that might lose a lot of games does not mean players take the floor aiming to put out a half-hearted effort. It does not mean coaches spend hours in their offices with their feet up, sipping sweet tea and playing Words With Friends. They may be overmatched, they may be more concerned about long-term development than immediate wins and losses. But that does not constitute tanking.

“There is a key difference,” Babby said, “between acknowledging that you’re rebuilding, which we are, and some notion that you’re not trying to succeed—anybody in this business, because you’re competitive, and you have a competitive nature, it is not going to do anything but give your heart and soul to try to win every night. I don’t know how you go about your job any other way.”

If the Suns had truly wanted to build a team that would lose night in and night out, they would not have made the trade for Eric Bledsoe that they pulled off early in the summer. As young as Phoenix is, and lacking in depth, Bledsoe is a dynamic wildcard, the kind of player who can keep a massive underdog in a game against the odds. His efficiency has slipped now that he is a No. 1 option (40.9 percent shooting), but he is averaging 22.0 points, 8.7 assists, 6.3 rebounds and 2.0 steals in three games.

Nor would the Suns have hired Jeff Hornacek to coach the team. Already, Hornacek has the Suns playing at a faster pace, and performing better defensively. No matter whom the Suns wind up with in next year’s draft—they could have as many as four first-round picks—Hornacek’s system already will be in place. If you’re truly tanking, you might pluck a coach out of obscurity, have him on the sideline for a year, then fire him (hello, Mike Dunlap!) in order to bring in a better qualified coach.

Hornacek has his team playing hard. The players are OK with that. Management is OK with that. No one is issuing instructions to lose—not in Phoenix, not in Philadelphia, and likely not anywhere else in the league. The Suns and Sixers could very well wind up in the league cellar (Orlando was 2-0 to start last year, on its way to 20-62, and the Bobcats were 7-5 before finishing 21-61). But they’re not trying to wind up there.

“If your editor came into you and said, ‘We need you to write some lousy pieces this week,’ would you do that?” Babby asked (offending me slightly). “You wouldn’t do that. I mean, Sean, you may do that anyway without trying, but that’s just depending on whether you’re good or not. We are not doing that here, though. We want to create a culture here. How can you lead a group of people if you’re trying to fail?”

You can’t. You might lose a lot of games because the roster is young and not deep enough. But that doesn’t mean you’re trying to fail.